Athens, Greece-based Gainjet (Stand 700) has been celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, having started up operations in April 2006. It now has an EASA AOC (aircraft operator’s certificate) covering worldwide operations, according to president and CEO, Captain Ramsey Shaban.

The company, which is owned by the Kuwait-based Alghanim Group, has grown steadily after surviving 2008’s worldwide economic downturn. “We manage 13 aircraft now. Nine are on our commercial AOC and the rest are private,” Capt. Shaban told AIN.

“We have two Boeing 737s and a private 757. We have only one or two aircraft based in Athens—the largest, the Boeings, are based in Birmingham [Airport – UK], at Marshalls.”

“We were going nicely until 2008. Then the worldwide recession cut things down. We managed to weather the storm, diversify and pull through,” said Capt. Shaban. “We’re doing OK now, but if we had depended on the Greek market we wouldn’t have survived, like many other Greek operators. Only 5 percent of our business is Greek; 25 percent is in the Middle East, 25 percent in Africa and the rest in Europe. We fly to Asia once in a while and the U.S. occasionally, as well.”

In the Middle East market he said, “We have our own clientele whom we like to select and develop relationships with. If we are lucky, we’ll get other clients,” which is a main aim of attending MEBAA, he added.

“We have two AOCs. The other is in Ireland—Gainjet Ireland. It has a [Bombardier] Challenger 604 and they’re adding a [Gulfstream] G550 and a G650. It’s a subsidiary of Gainjet Greece.” Capt. Shaban said that the company wants to “capitalize on the locations; we looked at the whole of Europe as we wanted to expand further. We looked again at the map and saw that Ireland has a good aviation environment and is moving quickly out of recession.

“We do a lot of flights to the U.S., and our medevac flights [especially] can do tech stops at Shannon, and do a crew change.”

He said the company also has an office in Kuwait, “and an aircraft, a Challenger 604—it is a medevac aircraft and is based there permanently. As the business picks up we may have another one based there, too.”

He also alluded to the African opportunity and said, “We’ve established an office in Rwanda. Surprisingly it stood out, and is stable with good security. It’s the Switzerland of Africa and very different from Kenya now, for example. We’re focusing on Rwanda and fly to Kigali quite often; we may permanently base [another] aircraft there, a Challenger.”

Capt. Shaban said that Gainjet now has 100 employees. It has managed 33 aircraft some of which “came and went”—26 were on the commercial register and seven were private. “So it is a substantial business.” But he reflected that the fleet could easily have been larger, but not without problems. “We have been choosy; picky even. We could have picked up lots of other clients, but they could just mean headaches.”

The company is adding a new aircraft in 2019: “We have ordered a G600 and we are looking at larger aircraft as well—Boeings mainly, to complement the others.”

Another Gainjet ambition is to establish “the first FBO in Greece.” Capt. Shaban told AIN, “We looked at taking a hangar at Athens. But the process is a bit slow because of the change of government, and we have looked at setting up an FBO. We put lots of effort in.”

Long Range Auxiliary Fuel

Another big project for Gainjet that is starting to come together is Boeing 737 “quick-change” fuel tanks. Its sister company, Swiss-based Long Range Auxiliary Fuel, has succeeded in obtaining an FAA Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) for the system, which consists of six tanks that are fitted in the cargo hold, extending the range from just over five hours to around nine hours. “We expect to have EASA validation soon—the tanks are at Marshall’s FBO at Birmingham [UK] now,” said Gainjet president and CEO, Capt. Ramsey Shaban.